Back in 1985,
Hayden Fry started "America Needs Farmers" as a promotion to help our
agricultural producers through the Farm Crisis. That was 29 years
ago.

To help out
our farmers during the crisis, the government provided direct payments, no
matter whether they had a profitable or non-profitable crop. This past year,
direct payments were taken away. Just because something made sense then, doesn't
mean it makes sense now.

As a farmer
myself, I find it a great misrepresentation that the University of Iowa is the
primary supporter of this program. If you were to Google "Does the University of
Iowa help Farmers?," your first two links would be - you guessed it - Iowa State
University!

ISU is widely
known as one of the premier agricultural colleges in the world. It offers majors
ranging from Agronomy to Animal Science, and Ag Systems Technology to
International Ag. What does Iowa offer its yearning farmers? They offer programs
in Ag medicine and Occupational and Environmental Health. Sounds a lot like more
medicine to me."

I ran across this on Crop
Talk and thought it was interesting.

When I was a kid, I didn't
even know where Iowa was. It seemed like a far off place to me. I wanted to
study agriculture at Purdue which was a very far off place from Sardinia, Ohio
where I grew up. I didn't do all the steps it took to get there and ended up at
Ohio State like my aunts and uncle. They grew up in harder times than 1985 or
today so I count my blessings.